I blame you not, for the fault was mine
by Iceinherheart
Summary: But Fitz was unconscious, should have been dead, and completely unable to feel the pain that he should have been in. Instead, Simmons was fully conscious and alert, and she felt every wound they'd received between the pair of them and then some. And she defiantly wasn't coping with it.


Being a director wasn't as easy as Fury had made it out to be, Coulson was starting to realise. It was both physically and mentally draining, and left him exhausted all the way down to the bones and left him wanting to do nothing more than to crawl into his bed at the end of the day and sleep for a week. But still, he was a friend before he was a director, an _Agent, _and so he'd made a habit to stop by the medical bay every three days.

The cuts that had scattered the faces of both scientists had long since healed, but that was of no consequence to anyone. The more alert members of the team had long since admitted that they would have rather see them still littering the pain skin of the two innocents, rather than see the pair the way that they were now. If the two where anyone other than who they where, they would almost certainly only be worried about Fitz. But Fitz was unconscious, should have been dead, and completely unable to feel the pain that he should have been in. Instead, Simmons was fully conscious and alert, and she felt every wound they'd received between the pair of them and then some.

And she defiantly wasn't coping with it.

"Simmons?" Coulson called, rapping two knuckles on the glass panel in the door twice – it wasn't a surprise to find her here anymore. It was far more worrying if she _wasn't_. The biochemist jerked in her seat in surprise, seemingly half asleep. With her knees tucked up to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around them, her chair seemed to swallow her and, to Coulson, she'd never looked so small, not even when she'd sat dying from an alien virus that everyone but her was powerless to stop.

"Director Coulson!" She gasped, scrambling to her feet in respect and wincing simultaneously. She faltered suddenly on her feet, her knees going weak beneath her as she brought her palm up to touch her forehead. But before Coulson had even begun his heroic dive forward to steady her, she caught herself on Fitz's bed frame with such ease, he was sure the move was practised. This wasn't the first occurrence of her sudden fainting fits then.

"Easy, Simmons!" He reminded her, his hands automatically gripping high at her waist as she wobbled, her ribs beneath his fingertips. Her very prominent ribs.

"Sorry!" She gasped, the skin between her eyebrows puckering as she screwed her face up. "I stood up too quickly, is all." She tugged the corners of her lips up at him, attempting to be reassuring, but it just seemed to hurt her more. He had an odd compulsion to smooth away the wrinkles in anyway that he could, just to stop the young woman from suffering. He saw her like he saw Skye: young, innocent and vulnerable, sometimes even more so than his charge, especially now. Something to be protected.

"You need to take it easy." He told her, releasing his grip on her and sitting himself down on the edge of Fitz's bed, watching the gentle breaths of the younger man. "How's he doing?"

"He's no different now than he was a month ago." Simmons told him, still standing, and she dropped her fingers down to the exposed skin at Fitz's wrist, taking his pulse despite the heart monitor beeping steadily behind her. "Unresponsive. He's alive, but just barely."

"And you?"

"I'm awake." She told him stiffly. "I'm standing. I'm talking. I remember everything. And there isn't a chance of my brain being broken." She fell back into her seat, entwining her fingers with her partner's. "Don't worry about me."

"Your brain's fine yes." He nodded. "But your heart? What about the rest of you? When was the last time you slept horizontally, Simmons?"

"It's been over a week." She muttered under her breath. "31 hours since I last slept, before you ask. Which is fine; considering I've been doing nothing but sitting around here being as useless as I have been."

"Have you eaten today?" She managed to look guilty about that.

"No, Sir."

"Drank?"

"Yes." She gave him a week smile. "Skye brought me down tea earlier."

"Did you drink _all_ of it?" He asked planting his hands firmly on his hips under his open jacket. She shuffled slightly in her seat, tugging at the long sleeves of her oversized cardigan. Which, Coulson was surprised to note, he wasn't sure was actually hers – he certainly remembered seeing Fitz wear it more than once. He wouldn't be surprised if the pale tie looped loosely around her throat wasn't hers either, even though he was sure the pink blouse she wore was. She shook her head sadly. "_Simmons._"

"I'm sorry!" She squeaked, her cheeks flushed as she wrapped her arms around her slowly shrinking waist, the long gaps between her calorie intakes catching up to her. "I drank _at least_ half of it, but there was a blip in his heart rate and I tried to check what was wrong and the medics that Fury assigned to him threw me out of the room because they thought I was getting in the way, and then I was pacing out there and by the time they'd let me back in and I'd finished yelling at the idiots about that fact that _I had two PhDs by the time I was seventeen and I know what cardiac arrest is I'm not an idiot _it had gone cold and I didn't have the energy left in me to go an get something else. I was planning on asking Skye to fetch me something when she next showed up, honest Sir!"

"Simmons!" Coulson called to her softly to stop her, pressing his hand to her shoulder to stop her and feeling the prominent bones under all the layers she insisted on wearing constantly. "_She gets cold easily, especially when the most the heating in this bloody plane goes to is minus a hundred degrees! Honestly, I swear she's half lizard!" _He'd heard Fitz tell Skye once when she'd asked, which had ended in FitzSimmons bickering over whether or not a human being half lizard was actually possible (Simmons was still adamant that it wasn't, while Fitz had been – _was_ - certain that it was. They trusted Simmons on that one, being the biochemist and all.) He slid a hand down her arm and encircled her fingertips in his own larger hand, the only part of her hand that wasn't covered by her (Fitz's) cardigan. She was freezing, like he'd expected.

"Can you not even feel the cold?" He asked, shrugging out of the black suit jacket he was never too far away from and holding it out to her, tugging it into place and buttoning it once she'd hesitantly slipped her arms through the sleeves. His medium sized clothes swamped her, and the beige woollen cuffs of Fitz's cardigan. "You need to take better care of yourself Jemma." He told her gently, laying a gentle hand on her forearm. Her head tilted in a sort of confusion at his use of her first name before it crumpled, wrinkles covering her pale face until she looked far too worn and old for a kid of her age. Her reaction confused him slightly for a moment; sure, it wasn't often for him to resort to using their first names, but he had been know to make exceptions to that rule in situations such as this. And, on top of that, it wasn't exactly unusual for people to use her first name. He'd heard Skye use it once after she'd woken up from surgery, he'd definitely overheard Fitz use it more than once… oh.

"It's fine." She told him before he could even open his mouth to apologise, watching the realisation spread across his features. "I have to get used to it. It's my _name_. I should be getting used to it. My mum rang yesterday, so did Kelly and Kathryn, and his mum rang the day before. They all use it…" She trailed off, brushing careful fingers over the unconscious boy's forehead, pushing back small ringlets that fell there.

"Biologically, I know all emotions stem from the brain, from hormone glands and triggers in our nervous system and the like - don't worry Sir I'm not going into any further details - I know the reason for them and how they affect the human body the way they do; Happiness makes us smile and go lightheaded, Anger makes our muscles tense to prepare in case we have to defend ourselves, sadness ends up making everything feel tight for a while before it all goes numb, to prevent the same from happening again." She turned then, finally looking him his eye. Her pale skin looked waxier from this angle, her eyes dull and sunken and tiered, her cheeks scalloping inwards with her diminishing weight.

"Personally, though? I don't understand why it hurts so much. I should be able to leave the room without panicking something will happen to him while I'm gone. I should be able to sleep without waking in tears. I'd say I should have an appetite, but I've known for years now that I don't eat when I'm stressed – my finals where great at proving that. I'm alive, but I feel as unconscious as he is."

"Survivors guilt." He hummed, glossing a hand lightly over the top of her back reassuringly, tracing the dip over her spine and her shoulder blades. "That's what it is. Because he's hurt and you're, more or less, fine. Maybe it's more than that. That's for you to work out; I can't help you with that."

"For a secret agent, you're really bad at being coy Sir." She told him, offering up another thin lipped smile, trace amounts of genuine amusement clinging to the corners of her mouth. He offered back a smile of his own and her eyes seemed all the brighter for it. "I know what you're talking about, I'm not an idiot." She whispered softly, her eyes suddenly avoiding his, fixed on the thread of the blanket draped over Fitz while he slept. "He told me - about five seconds before he pushed that goddamn button. Didn't even give me a chance to think about it. I was a little bit too occupied with trying to change his mind at the time." She sniffed, trailing a hand over her face, but her eyes and cheeks where dry. That didn't surprise him. No one had seen her cry about it yet.

"He's trusting you with a lot." He sighed, crossing his arms together over his chest rather than reaching for her yet again. "You know that, don't you? He's not just trusting you to help him get better, or to save his life. Take it from someone who's been there before; those things are easy compared to trusting someone with your heart." She pressed her eyes closed tightly, steadying her shallow breaths

"I've spent sleepless nights wondering whether it was me he was afraid of or whether it was the protocols, the rules, that got in the way. Figured it was me."

"And you can't remember the last time he didn't trust you with something, so it stung just a little bit." He hummed, glancing out of the corner of his eye to look at her. He found her already watching him. "Yeah, I remember that feeling."

"Audrey will understand Sir, if you don't mind me saying. She's smart, she won't throw away what you had because you were trying to protect her." She tilted her head at him, her eyes sincere. "You're the Director now. Couldn't you just, take a couple of days and one of the planes… we'd be fine without you for a while, and we'd all understand. You could bring her back here, where she'd be safer. She'd be happier too. I know she would. She loves you so much." She trailed off, seemingly talking to herself now.

"I can't do that, not right now." He wrinkled his nose at her slightly, but wouldn't go further into the details of _why_. "Besides, are you really in the position to give relationship advice, Simmons?" She snorted, her shoulders jerking with the sudden loss of breath as her lips quirked up slightly. He smiled back at her, glad to see a fraction of the life back in the usually perky scientist. "We're all a load of idiot when it comes to our hearts." He pointed out. "Even those of us who can build them."

"I can't _build _a heart, Sir!" She insisted, pushing her hair from her face and she scrubbed one of her hands over her eyes. "Do you think…" She chewed on her short thumb nail, and Coulson found himself wondering for a moment if it was from anxiety, or subconscious hunger. Both was possible, but only one was easily treatable. "Do you think he'll regret it when he wakes up? Telling me, I mean."

"I don't know, Simmons." He told her, setting a hand down gently on Fitz's forehead, brushing away his growing curls and shaking his own head lightly. "I wish I could tell you that I did, I wish I could make this easier for you, but really the only person who knows that answer is you." Her mouth dropped open, her protest almost visible on the tip of her tongue. _I don't know that. _"Because," He continued before the words could fall, and her mouth snapped shut, accompanied by the clunk of enamel colliding with enamel. "Fitz probably doesn't even know that yet. He told you he loves you because he thought he was going to _die, _Jemma. He never expected to have to deal with the consequences of his actions, because he never expected to live that long. He'll only regret telling you if you give him a reason to regret it." He reached out a hand to lay it over hers. "Do you understand?"

She nodded, her pale, boney fingers turning in his to clutch onto him with more strength than her ill treated body should have contained at that moment.

"Will you please talk to May for me, Sir?" She asked quietly, staring down at her sleeping… Fitz. "Or, at least, ask her to come down here when it's convenient for her? Or you, even. I don't think that I could bring myself to leave until I know that he's okay. Really okay. Not just alive."

"Of course." He promised calmly, but he still raised an eyebrow at her. "Do you mind if I ask why?"

"No, Director." She sighed. "I want to see if she'll train me, once he's awake." She flopped back in her chair, tucking her legs up to her chest and hugging them tightly. "I keep thinking; if I had some sort of defence skills, any at all, we wouldn't have ended up in that box. Hell, we might not even have ended up in that plane at all, and he'd still be… maybe then he'd be awake now, rather than like this. I can't do that again. If there's anyway that I can stop it, I need to try it." She flicked her hollow eyes up to him. "Do _you _understand, Sir?"

"Of course I do." He nodded, a small, hopeful smile pulling at his lips as he crouched in front of her. "But we can talk to May tomorrow. For now though, I'm going to go and get you food, and tea, all of which you are going to finish, and then you're going to sleep, properly, for more than four hours." He nudged her chin up with his forefinger and smiled at her as her brushed out the shoulders of his jacket, still hung loosely around her providing vital warmth, physical and emotional. "I already have one of the very few people I trust hospitalised, Simmons. I will not allow you to endanger yourself anymore than you already have. Okay? You need to be healthy when Fitz wakes up, because he's going to need you, one hell of a lot."

"Okay."

"Good." He stood, grasping her shoulder firmly, but not enough to hurt her delicate, weathered frame. "I won't be long. I'd tell you to stay, but I doubt you're going to go anywhere." She laughed slightly, chewing her lip again. "And preferences?"

"Something healthy." She nodded. "I never could stand the junk he went through. I stole a couple of crisps from him here or there, but only ever to stop him nagging." Coulson nodded back at her and turned to the door, tugging it open, but a small, chilly hand gripped at the cuff of his dress shirt, stopping him from leaving through its presence only, the weak strength not enough alone.

"Coulson… Phil." She rolled the word uncertainly, her eyes questioning whether it was acceptable or not. He gripped the fingers holding him in place as encouragement, and she only made him wait a moment longer before she opened her mouth again. "Thank you. For everything. You didn't have to do this, not for us, but you did anyway. You didn't have to take us on, you didn't have to try to protect me from SHIELD protocol when they wanted to dump me in the ocean, you didn't have to look after us or any of it, and I don't think you know just how much that means to me. And I know that it would mean just as much to Fitz as well."

"Jemma." He shook his head softly at her silly girl, guiding her back to her seat and setting her down in it again, drawing the spare blanket around her. She didn't bother to look back over her shoulder at where she was going while she walked backwards, trusting him not to let her trip, or trusting him to catch her if she did. And if even Grant Ward chose to save her from her fall, Phil Coulson could definitely do the same. "You don't need to thank me. You're family, after all." He brushed her ragged hair from her face, making a mental reminder to persuade Skye to take her out to get a haircut sometime soon. "You didn't give up on me when Centipede held and tortured me, so don't ever expect me to give up on you."

"Simmons." He called back once he reached the door, watching her curl herself up beside her partner, standing guard at his bedside, more than ready to see him wake. She looked up at him, tilting her head slightly. "He's going to be okay." He told her, before turning away to fetch the half starved girl something to eat before she wasted away in her seemingly endless waiting.

_And so will you._

* * *

><p>Haha! Finally, four months down the line and this is done!<br>And just in time too, what with the new episode so close (in America, unfortunately!)  
><em>So close! <em>

IIHH xxx


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